Cron Expression Generator

A cron expression is a string of five fields separated by spaces that defines a schedule for automated tasks (cron jobs). The five fields represent minute (0-59), hour (0-23), day of month (1-31), month (1-12), and day of week (0-6, where 0 is Sunday). For example, "0 9 * * 1-5" means "at 9:00 AM, Monday through Friday." Cron expressions are used on Unix/Linux servers, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, cloud schedulers, and many other platforms.

To run a task every 5 minutes, use the expression "*/5 * * * *". The "*/5" in the minute field means "every 5th minute." The remaining asterisks mean "every hour, every day of the month, every month, every day of the week." You can also use the "Every 5 Minutes" preset button in the generator above to set this instantly.

In cron syntax, * (asterisk) means "every possible value" for that field. / (slash) defines step values, so */5 in the minute field means every 5 minutes. - (hyphen) defines a range, so 1-5 in the day-of-week field means Monday through Friday. , (comma) creates a list of specific values, so 1,15 in the day-of-month field means the 1st and 15th of the month. You can combine these: "0 9 1,15 * 1-5" means at 9 AM on the 1st and 15th, but only if those days are weekdays.

The standard Unix/Linux cron uses five fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. Some systems (like Spring, Quartz, and AWS CloudWatch) use a sixth field for seconds at the beginning, and sometimes a seventh field for year. This generator creates standard 5-field expressions compatible with crontab, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions, and most scheduling systems.

Use the "Next 5 Executions" preview in this generator to verify your schedule. It calculates the next five dates and times your cron job would run, so you can confirm it matches your expectations. You can also type or paste any cron expression into the "Edit Directly" field to see its human-readable description and upcoming execution times. If the expression has a syntax error, you will see an error message explaining the problem.